On a Tuesday
by bethanyhallen
Summary: She has always been the one to say goodbye. She wasn't ready for his.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: They aren't mine.

A/N:Apologies for the mistakes...I need a beta. Not really a story but a ficlet.

He left her on a Tuesday.

Three have passed since then.

On the first Tuesday she had managed to get a shower and when finished put on another pair of pajama pants and t-shirt. She crawled back into the bed, sheets no longer smelling of fresh laundry, or him but her and her alone.

Her.

Alone.

She needs to get it together. She knows this. She's a rational person and that isn't going to change. She deserves this time to fall apart a little. She has always been the one to say goodbye. She wasn't ready for his.

He only left her three Tuesdays ago.

Five pass and she makes it back to the precinct. The boys stop giving her the sympathetic look by lunchtime; of course it took her giving them more than one glare for them to get it together. She wasn't going to break, she was still Beckett. She's lost people in her life him leaving was not going to break her. ..As far as she would let anyone else see.

She was still Beckett.

Her first murder case was simple and solved by her second day back. She could do this. She could do this without him.

She dives into her work again. Not losing herself into it like she has in the years past. Before he came into her life and pulled her out. Instead she tries so desperately to do so. She wants to drown in the work that comes her way. She puts everything she has into it and when she looks up again twelve have passed.

Twelve Tuesdays and she's lived through them.

Twelve Tuesdays, twelve weeks, eighty-four days, two-thousand-sixteen hours have passed…Not that she's counting. No she doesn't know how many minutes or seconds have ticked by since he left her.

Except she does.

She has it calculated, all of it. She knows how many hours have passed since the last time he touched her, how many days have passed since his lips had been pressed against hers.

She goes back to those moments as often as her memory will allow her.

They flash through her mind in seconds, completely rips her heart out and steals her breath.

Tuesday sixteen she finds herself under the covers again. It's too warm in the apartment to be in a cocoon of blankets but she covers her head again when the sunlight begins to filter into the room through the closed blind.

She can't be blamed for this though.

No, this isn't her fault.

She had been canvasing when it happened. She expected it to at some time. But expecting it and being ready for it were two different things.

She had just opened the driver side door to her cruiser when he walked out of the little café on the corner of Mulberry and Broome. The door opened and he stepped out onto the sidewalk and oh how she tried not to follow. But when his name escaped her mouth her feet were already following him. He didn't turn to her, not right away, no. It took her hand on his shoulder for his body to turn to hers.

As his eyes meet hers she knew she was mistaken.

Brown could never be mistaken for blue.

It hadn't been him.

It would never be him.

He left her on a Tuesday.

Sixteen Tuesdays have passed and there will be a lifetime more.

A lifetime of them left for her to live without him.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Disclaimer**_: They aren't mine and I'm actually happy with the person that owns them.

_**A/N:**_ Not sure where this second part came from but I hope you enjoy it...Thank you for the reviews and follows on the last chapter. I'm not a writer at all so knowing that there are people who like what I do manage to get out is amazing. Please forgive the mistakes I've made it's 3 am and I have no beta.

One-hundred-fifty-six…That's how many Tuesdays pass when she finally gives up. She gives up and goes to see him.

She never thought time could pass so quickly and yet so slowly at the same time. That time without him would pass at all…without his smile bright and shining when directed at her, his eyes so blue and clear like crystals the color of the ocean on a sunny summer day. But it has passed and the pain may sometimes be just a dull ache but it's there just the same…she's different than she was back then… three years without him, of course she is.

Time has changed her just as much as he did.

Tuesday sixteen had left her more broken than the first one had. The small promise that she thought she had of seeing him again in that moment and then to have it taken away from her so quickly was crushing.

Her life as it had been would never be as it once was…that's what Tuesday sixteen had made her realize.

She had started marking her life by Tuesdays…she knew just after Tuesday six. Tuesday eight made it even harder to disregard. She had made living in denial into an art form by Tuesday eleven.

Lying in that bed after the sixteenth Tuesday, the tears she had refused to let fall beginning to escape, the denial she had lived in for the past weeks had finally came to an end.

The slight flutter she felt caused her heart to skip. It was quick but there just the same. A quick flutter and she knew she had to pull herself out…he wasn't there to do it for her this time.

She had written off the sickness that had forced her to her knees in front of the toilet that week of the sixth Tuesday to the late night visit to the Chinese place on the corner. She had written off her want to dip her fries into her chocolate milkshake at Remy's on something she'd once seen him do, and blamed the tightness in her jeans on her lack of time in the precinct gym.

But that flutter after Tuesday sixteen had changed her.

Was going to change her much like he had.

Tuesday seventeen and she was sitting in an office ready for the confirmation she really didn't need.

A formality.

Tuesday thirty she painted the guest room green…the color of growth…Life.

Life.

Tuesday thirty-seven she held it in her arms.

The life they had made together, the life that was a perfect mix of her an him…was hers now, her alone...His eyes were blue.

He was born on a Tuesday.

He rescued her, saved her from what she was sinking into. He changed her.

Martha stops by once every week, Alexis moves back in and Kate wouldn't want it any other way.

As happy as her son makes her, that is how sad knowing Castle will never know this life makes her.

Eighty-nine Tuesdays…her son is a year old and he is her reason for being.

Much like his father had been.

She's not on the streets anymore…she won't risk it. She misses it. She doesn't miss it enough to chance leaving her son without his only parent.

Her son changed her.

The boys visit every now and again. It hurts more when they're all together…because they will never really be all together.

Alexis meets someone somewhere around Tuesday one-hundred-twelve and it's serious. By Tuesday one-fifty-five they're married. Alexis had always been different from Kate. Losing her mother had made her build walls; the loss of Castle had made Alexis live a life more open and unafraid than Kate could have ever done.

It's Tuesday one-hundred-fifty-six. Three years now and the loft quiet again.

Alexis has moved her things and there's a box she left on the desk inside Castle's office. The past week's events have kept her from opening it but the loft is to quiet and she needs something to fill the time until her young son wakes from his nap.

She's not sure what to expect, she imagines old books Alexis had had in her youth, something she's now giving to her younger brother.

She's wrong.

'_Found this in the storage space. Guess dad moved it there when you moved in. See you and the little monster on Sunday. Love you both.'_

Under that there's an array of random memorabilia. A newspaper clipping from his first case with her, a folded up piece of paper with names…all of them ending with _Heat_…and she's happy to know that Crystal Heat didn't happen. He saved the movie stub from their movie night watching "Forbidden Planet" He was a romantic…she loved that about him. There was a notebook that had his scribbling's in it. She knew he loved to hand write some of his work but after flipping a few pages she sees her name written more than once.

He had a journal…this was news to her.

She doesn't stop to read it now, wanting to discover what is still inside the box, but will definitely come back to it later.

There were things in the box that had other meanings…not all of it about them alone.

But the last thing in the box is what makes her throat tighten.

It's a photo.

She's not sure who had taken it. But neither one of them had known at the time…of course he must have soon after because the edges are frayed and it's a bit faded. It was the first night at the Old Haunt. They're both looking at one another and she can see so clearly now what she wasn't ready to see then.

She loses time while staring at the two of them from those years ago.

The sounds of mumbling from the baby monitor drifting in from the bedroom bring her back to the here and now.

Soon she's lifting her son over the bars of his crib and yes he may be over two years old and ready for a toddler bed but _she's_ not ready for him to hit that milestone yet.

He's grabbing for the photo that she still hasn't put down.

"Momma" he says pointing to the Kate in the photo.

"Yeah, that's momma," she tells him.

He looks at her and then back to the photo. Points to it again and then points to the man beside her. "Dada," he says and she knows it isn't a question. He knows his father.

One-hundred-fifty-six Tuesdays and she knows she has to do it, knows it's time.

She has only been here once.

That was the day they had all said goodbye.

Before the marble stone had been brought in and marked his place.

One-hundred-fifty-six Tuesdays have passed and she's standing at his feet staring at his name etched into the stone. Their son on her hip and the words trying to push pass the lump in her throat.

"Castle, this is Alexander…I thought it was time you met."

Sensing his mother's need for comfort, not understanding what this moment means, he places his head on her cheek.

"I 'ove you, momma," he says to her in his soft baby voice.

She smiles and pulls back to look at the boy in her arms with eyes so much like his father.

"I love you, baby boy, so much." She pulls him closer and kisses his forehead.

One-hundred-fifty-six Tuesdays and it's still hard. The letting go is still hard. Her son makes walking away from where Castle was laid to rest three years ago slightly easier.

The missing will never stop. She may not always measure time by Tuesdays then again she may always do so. But their son rescues her.

Alexander rescues her.

And he was born on a Tuesday.


End file.
